


Web of Stars

by tricatular



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: F/M, Shapeshifting, Soul Bond, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 08:26:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2844515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricatular/pseuds/tricatular
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Naya and Julian struggle with the mating bond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Web of Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> Now, I love the Psy-Changeling books to little pieces, but I figured that at least one person in this universe had to look at this particular flavor of magic soulbonding and go, "whoa there, biological imperative, I'm really gonna need you to slow your goddamn roll." And so, this fic! I've always wanted to give writing in the universe a shot, and Yuletide was my chance. :D
> 
> Naya is 27-ish in this; Julian is 30-ish. I decided it would be more interesting to have Roman and Julian both become doctors and to have Naya to grow up to be a soldier, and so I took the liberty of handwaving Naya's baby telepathy as a very strong secondary ability, haha. Enjoy everything.

The problem with having sex with a packmate was that everyone could tell that you'd had sex recently, even if you scrubbed that packmate's particular scent off your skin; and if you happened to be the alpha's only child, you got a lot of people curious, and a lot of sentinels looking a whole lot of askance at you. 

Naya Hunter had better things to do with her time than get cornered by Aunt Mercy and Uncle Dorian. She had novice soldiers to train -- they gave her the cockiest juveniles in the pack, the ones who were too sure of their changeling strength and needed to be taken apart by a Tk who clocked in at 8.4 on the gradient. She had reports to write for Vaughn. _If you need to escape, I can run interference for you,_ Keenan 'pathed her from across the soldier's mess. He was too gentle-natured to be a soldier, but he was a brilliant tutor for everything from biology to higher math, and he gladly took the soldiers' bribes

_I'm not running,_ Naya said, drumming her fingers on her datapad. _They can ask all the questions they want._

_They're cats,_ said Keenan. _Dad isn't going to play nice._

Uncle Dorian did not play nice. Uncle Dorian was the good cop to Aunt Mercy's scowling bad cop, and they'd had forty years to perfect the routine. "Naya," he said, sitting across the table from her, hands steepled. Mercy hovered at his shoulder, frowning down at her. That was the Uncle Riley Stare, Naya had learned, very early on, and Mercy pulled it off almost better than he did.

"Sir," she said, "ma'am."

"Writing a report?" He sounded friendly. Cheerful, even. Just a friendly sentinel asking friendly question of a soldier. 

"The damage in the northeast quadrant from the storm last week," Naya said. "I took some of the juveniles out there to practice assessing the damage to our cameras, in case they're in the area and the techs can't make it." 

"How are your juveniles?" Dorian asked. 

_Whenever you want,_ Keenan said. _You're going to drop your guard eventually._ She 'pathed him an image of Aunt Mercy's face, and got laughter back along their line. 

"They're fine," she said. "I haven't had to break any bones in the past week." Aunt Mercy's face broke for a second, and Naya saw a proud smirk flash across her face, before it went back to the Riley Stare. After the first broken wrist, it tended to be smooth sailing. Naya did good work getting the unruly ones into line: she knew how to handle a dominance challenge without humiliating the kid who'd make the mistake of challenging her, and her father was proud. 

But her father was the one who'd sent these two. She knew it.

"Some of the our people have come back from roaming," Mercy said. "Jon and Julian came back just last month. Have you thought about going out yourself?" 

"My family is here," she said, and did not say: _I don't have an animal that wants to roam._ No tooth, no claw, just a head full of psy abilities from her cardinal mother. 8.7 Tk. 6.0 Tp. The faintest, wildest flashes of empathy, that told her that her mother sometimes gave in and mourned the gentle telepath daughter she'd dreamed of, and told her when a juvenile was nursing some hidden hurt. "My students are here." 

"You might meet someone from another pack to mate with," Dorian said, idly inspecting his nails, which were perfect. "Unless you've found someone at home?" 

_Uh-oh, they've got you now,_ Keenan said. She sent a pulse of telekinetic power across the room to smack him on the back of the head. 

She had an angle for this. She was ready. She didn't have a cat, but the changeling part of her could gauge her dominance relative to other pack members', and she was as dominant as they came.  
"I'm sure I'll find a mate in my own time, Uncle Dorian," Naya said. "If you're worried about having an unmated female dominant in the pack structure. I've been keeping myself under control. You won't have any trouble from me, I promise."

_That_ threw them. "I just worry that you haven't found an outlet," said Dorian, recovering quickly. 

_Don't you dare,_ Naya 'pathed to Keenan. _If you say a single word, I will wring your neck._ Silence from him. She was on her own. It was next to impossible to keep a straight face with the two of them staring them down, and for one short, desperate moment she thought it might be better to just come clean about the whole thing. _Yes, Uncle Dorian, I'm fucking Julian Ryder. Frontways, sideways, backways, on every available horizontal surface in my aerie, on most of the vertical ones, and if I thought I could pull it off, we'd be doing it on the ceiling, too._

Now that she thought about it, she probably could pull it off. It would be a one-time stunt, but it was exactly the kind of ridiculous thing Julian would love.

"I don't know what you mean," Naya said, as innocently as she could manage, "I have martial arts." 

*

It had taken them most of their lives to get to the point where they could do it frontways, sideways, and backways. A few clumsy kisses when they were teenagers and learning not to think of one another as siblings, and then he and Roman had been busy with med school, and she'd been picking up black belts like wolves picked up fleas. It had never been the right time, until he'd come back from his last residency and it _was._

"They're onto us," Julian said, later, slinking out of her bed to pull his underwear back on. Naya lounged on the bed, naked, admiring his body "Roman and Noor got a visit from Clay."

"And you?" 

"Vaughn asked me if I'd seen you hanging around with any men," he said. "I told him I hadn't."

"Mercy and Dorian got me," Naya said, and Julian winced. "The old good-cop-bad-cop."

"Do you think they suspects anything?" 

"Of course they do. You smell like me, and it's not like we can keep our hands off each other. Us and all of our friends getting cornered and interrogated by sentinels is only a formality."

"God, we'll never hear the end of it," Naya said. "We're never going to get a moment alone."

"Is that why you've never dated anyone in the pack? Because you're the alpha's daughter?" 

She hesitated. Was it? Or was it because there had never been anyone but Julian? She tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear and examined her bracelet: one of the necklaces he and Roman had made for her when she was a baby, looped twice around her wrist. They'd gotten bored with making jewelry by the time she was two, but she didn't take this one off, not even in the shower. There hadn't been anyone but her for Julian, either, but they'd both had lovers before. One-night, two-night stands -- always outside of DarkRiver. It had only been polite. 

"I don't want to talk about this," she said, and crooked her finger, reaching out with her mind to pull down his boxers. He scowled and yanked them back up. He'd grown up big and lean, and his green-gold eyes reflected the light from the other room. Naya had wanted him since before she'd known what _wanting_ was. 

She sat up on the bed, but Julian stayed put. His jaw was clenched. "Eating me up with your eyes isn't going to distract me, princess." he said. 

"I don't have to be anywhere near you to give you a handjob, you know," Naya said, "I could go make a sandwich and stroke you off from the other kitchen. Do you want a sandwich? _I_ want a sandwich." 

"Naya -- "

"Think of the possibilities." A peanut butter sandwich really did sound good right about now. She slipped past him, and he was hot on her heels all the way to her narrow kitchen. "I could be talking to your mom in your living room and feeling you up at the same time, and no one would even know. You'd have to go to the bathroom to jerk off -- like a teenager -- and I'd be able to follow you in there and help, without ever skipping a word. It would be hilarious." 

She knew how exactly far Julian could be pushed, and she'd crossed the line. He was on her in an instant, pinning her body to the counter. In her shock, she dropped her knife, and didn't have the presence of mind to stop it hitting the floor. "It wouldn't be hilarious," Julian said, right into her ear, and her faint sense of these things told her that his animal was right at the surface. "You'd be so wet you couldn't think straight, let alone speak." She felt the hard press of his cock at her back and arched against him, the top of her head bumping his chin. 

But there were no arms around her waist, no hands on her breasts, nothing but his big body crowding her, holding her in place. "I'm still not distracted," Julian said. Naya could have dislodged him in a heartbeat, with an idle thought -- she was the fighter, not him -- but this wasn't about that. "Come on, princess, what are you so scared of?" 

He bit the the side of her neck, hard enough to leave a mark in a place she couldn't hide; it wasn't a liberty he'd ever taken before. With another changeling girl, it wouldn't have been a serious declaration, but Naya knew it for what it was, here, between them. It was a challenge. His hands slid up her arms to squeeze her shoulders, and she shivered.

She took a deep breath. "My parents -- they had this big love story," she said. "When mom goes, dad isn't going to be far behind, or vice-versa. They can't live without each other." 

"And?" Julian said. He rubbed his cheek against her hair. The gesture was more leopard than human.

"And it's terrifying," Naya said, and then it all came rushing out, everything she'd never had any intention of saying to him, or to anyone. "My whole life, every little bit of independence I've gotten, I've had to fight for. I wanted to be a soldier so that no one in the pack could smooth my path for me. Mating is supposed to be this beautiful thing, but sometimes I think about the bond -- even with you -- and I want to run to another continent."

"You've thought about mating with someone else?" 

Naya stepped on his foot, and he growled. "There's no one but you," she said. "But what if it wasn't you? Or if it wasn't me, for you? What if someone else came along -- what would we do then? We'd have no choice but to -- "

"Nadiya," Julian said. "Do you think the alpha would suddenly be interested in our sex lives if we were just having sex?"

_Obviously,_ she nearly said. But as far as Lucas Hunter was concerned, his daughter was still a chubby-cheeked toddler dragging a stuffed wolf behind her and pretending she'd lost control of her Tk when she threw her mother's cooking against the wall. There was only one reason he would suddenly be interested in her escapades.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. 

Slowly, Naya turned around in Julian's arms. When he took an obliging step back, she slapped her most dazzling smile on her face. She feinted as though she was going to move toward him, and, grinning, he took another step back -- which was all the space she needed to punch him straight in the jaw, putting just enough Tk behind the blow to make him stagger and to give him a bruise that would last at least a week. If he was lucky. Clutching the side of his face, he straightened and stared at her, dumbfounded. "Naya, what the hell -- "

"You weren't going to tell me?" She didn't recognize her own voice, the anger in it, an anger that disguised the fact that she was speaking around the biggest lump she'd ever had in her throat. She couldn't even shout. "That we're in the mating dance?" 

"I thought you felt it, too," Julian said hoarsely. "I can't think about anything but you, my leopard goes nuts every second it can't see you, 

"I'm your best friend," Naya said, "I've known you, known your mind, since before I was born. You should have told me the minute it started."

"You would have run. You'd be on a mountaintop in Mongolia by now." He reached out for her, to cup her cheek, but she slapped his hand away. "I'd have no choice but to follow you," he said. 

_This_ was why mating was terrifying, the compulsion, the raw, primal obsession. Until the bond was in place, it was a train off its tracks, a ship taking on water, a diver in freefall. "And if I told you I wanted distance?" she said. 

"You'd have it," Julian said, without hesitation. With changeling speed, he took her wrist in a gentle grip, the wrist she wore his necklace on. He pressed her hand over his heart. "No matter where you are in the world, you're always here, too." 

"I need you to leave now," Naya said. She could not meet his gaze. He took her face in his hands and pressed gentle, desperate kisses to the side of her mouth, and she couldn't bring herself to respond to him, despite the fire he kindled in her. " _Now_ ," she said again, turning away from his touch, crossing her arms protectively over her chest.

Without another word or touch, Julian turned on his heel, shifted in a blaze of light, and left.

*

"I get it, kiddo," Aunt Mercy said, a week later, materializing from around the other side of the punching bag Naya was beating into submission. "I really, really get it." 

"Get what?" Naya said, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. Mercy offered her a towel, and she took it gratefully. 

"You. Julian. Two dominants trying to navigate the mating dance is a fucking nightmare." 

"Is this the part where you tell me I should get over myself and talk to him?" She hadn't seen him in days, and hadn't spoken to him since that night in her aerie, and she didn't trust a quiet, well-behaved leopard man. There had to be something up his sleeve. 

"Not at all," said Mercy. She steadied the punching bag for Naya when Naya threw a roundhouse kick at it. "He's going about his business as normal, like we all don't know his cat's clawing him up from the inside." 

Another kick. Another. Her form had to be perfect, even if no one was watching, and especially if anyone was. The emotional strain of resisting the dance, resisting _Julian_ , was taking its toll on her shields, and this was a meditation that worked better for her than any other kind. "If you're trying to make me feel guilty, it's not working," Naya said. 

"I'm a mother," Mercy said. "If I was trying to make you feel guilty, you'd feel guilty. I'm just saying -- most changeling men couldn't pull off what he's doing right now. They'd be going nuts; they'd be howling under your window every night and rallying the pack for an offensive."

"Is that what Uncle Riley did?" 

The crow's feet around Mercy's eyes deepened when she smiled. Naya kept on kicking the bag, trying to ignore her growing sense of dread. "He spent a lot of time groveling at my feet for being a dominant prick with no sense of boundaries, like our ranks weren't exactly the same," she said. "And then we had a near-death experience, which tends to get people's priorities in order real fast, especially in wartime. But that's not the point, kid. The point is: what's Julian groveling for?" 

Naya opened her mouth to answer, but Mercy held up a hand. "No, don't tell me. He's made it clear that he doesn't want any of us in your business, and pack is there to take care of you, but it also knows when to stay out of it. Just -- think about it, okay? And try to put him out of his misery sooner, rather than later, before he does get into a fight." 

"I will, Aunt Mercy," Naya said, and switched feet to work on the other leg. 

It wasn't as though she'd stopped thinking about it. 

The sex had been better. They'd been more in step outside the bedroom. She hadn't been able to take her mind off him, but that was par for the course when the man you loved finally came home from his wanderings. She should have seen it on in the Web of Stars, somehow. 

Naya closed her eyes to look at the Web, ignoring her splintered shields. She could repair them later. Her mother's star sat inside of her father's, both of them radiant, but dimming with age. Tammy and Nate were linked to her father, and Roman and Julian's twin stars were linked to them. She'd always been linked to the two of them, but the connections had always been faint -- dear friends, but not family or lovers. 

She looked deeper. There was a second line, thin and gossamer, between her star and Julian's, flickering in and out of existence. She held it between her mental fingers, contemplating it. She could sever it right now, with a thought, and never be tied down to him, or to anyone. She'd loved Julian before the bond, and she'd love him without it. Maybe if she went to him, explained that she wasn't rejecting _him --_

_Come on, princess, what are you so scared of?_

Naya let the bond go and fell back into her body. At least she knew for certain: whatever unfeeling cosmic force decided these things had meant the two of them to be together. It would be so much worse if it hadn't, if they'd gone their entire lives fearing that one day, one of them might look into a stranger's eyes and see their destiny there. 

It was easier to give into the strings at her heart that were pulling her, dragging her toward him, than to keep fighting it. She buried her face in her hands. She was going to have to talk to him. She looked at the clock in the practice room: around this time, Julian and Roman would be at one of the dozen or more free clinics the pack operated in the city. He'd be off in an hour and a half, and it took an hour to get to San Francisco from here. 

She didn't know what she was going to say or do when she got there. But she had time to figure it out.

*

"Look, Jules, you're going to have to take all the humans today," Roman said that morning, upon seeing his brother walk into the clinic. "You're going to pick a fight with any predatory changeling that walks through the door, and all the non-predatories are going to run screaming."

"I'm fine, Dr. Ryder," Julian snapped, from the office couch.

"You're not fine, Dr. Ryder. And hey, look, you're trying to start one with me now! With your own brother. Your own flesh and blood. Here, I've sorted out all my humans, get familiar with them." Roman sat next to him and put an arm around his shoulder, and immediately, Julian's animal stopped clamoring at the inside of his skin. Just for a second. They were both doctors, but Roman was a real healer, like their mother, and he could put any pack member at ease. When they were kids, the three of them had exploited this ruthlessly. No adult could stand up to three pairs of big, innocent green eyes. 

The three of them. Julian, Roman, and Naya. "Whatever you say, Rome," said Julian. 

Roman let go, and Julian's leopard remained calm. "Nice of you to join us," Roman said, with an easy grin. "I gave the nurse the day off, too." Their nurse was a deer changeling, and she'd been getting more and more on edge around him in the past few days. It was unfair to everyone, when he was like this. But he'd promised Naya as much distance as she needed.

None of their long-time patients would ever one Dr. Ryder for the other. Having to work twice as hard at what came naturally to his brother had left its marks on him -- he could never be bitter, but he knew he lacked Roman's aplomb with people, his twin's effortless confidence, his ability to breeze through social situations. It made him wonder why Naya had chosen him over Roman. One time, years ago, he'd asked, and she'd laughed and punched him in the arm and said, _Because he isn't you, moron. You're not interchangeable._

But she hadn't chosen him, yet. He'd given her the distance she wanted, and she hadn't spoken to him in a week. His only consolation was that all of her novice soldiers had been complaining about their workout schedule, and he knew, because Roman insisted on telling him everything she was doing, that she was pushing herself twice as hard. This wasn't a problem she could punch in the face, though she'd tried. The last time he'd seen her, his mark was still on her neck. That had been days ago. His own jaw was still green with bruising from when she'd decked him. 

It was an easy day, at least: the humans were mostly inner-city kids coming in for their vaccinations before school started. Cubs, no matter what species they were, never failed to put Julians in a good mood. Roman might have had an easier time comforting the ones who got scared of the needle -- _Stop comparing yourself to him,_ Naya would be saying right about now, had said to him all through med school, when she'd skipped drinks with the soldiers to come over and help him study. _You're a going to be a great doctor, so shut up and tell me the bones in the foot again._

He thought he smelled her, just once, outside the building, and nearly dropped the syringe he was putting in the sharps container. It was ridiculous. He imagined her scent at least three times a day, but it was there, vivid, lavender and a clean, sharp smell, like ozone after a lightning strike. And it was gone just as fast. 

Half an hour later, when they were closing up, he caught her scent, and he _knew_ she was there. 

"Rome," Julian said, standing up at his desk and clenching his fists at his sides. "I -- "

"Just go, Dr. Ryder," said Roman. 

"I owe you one, Dr. Ryder," he said, and left his papers for his brother to take care of. 

He was out the door in a minute. Naya stood before him, and his leopard went very still, waiting. They were just about as dominant as one another, which made things wonderfully simple for the leopard: she was a beast worth stalking. It didn't have to roll over on its belly for her (but it wouldn't have minded) or worry about bullying about her, and it didn't understand why he wanted to pick her up and carry her off to his bed. This was a hunt. There were greater rewards in patience. 

Julian listened to the beast. 

Taking a deep breath, Naya walked up to him. She'd changed into a white tee and a knee-length green skirt the color of her eyes, her dark, tangled hair said she'd come straight from the senior soldiers' practice room into the city, and she had dark circles under her eyes to rival his own. Knowing that she had to have been suffering, too, wasn't any consolation at all. 

"You're still wearing your lab coat," she said. Her smile was strained, but genuine. It made him ache. 

"It makes me look authoritative," Julian said, straightening the lapels. 

"Take it off," she said. 

His hands went immediately to the buttons, and he removed it matter-of-factly and draped it over his arm. "Better?" 

Naya looked him up and down without an ounce of shame. "You'll do," she said, in a cool tone of voice that would have juveniles running extra laps to impress her. There was none of the furious woman who'd tried to dislocate his jaw a week ago in her right now, and it felt wrong. But she'd come to him, and she hadn't rejected the bond yet. "Let's go to the park," she said. "It's a nice day."

"The park," Julian said. A public place, where she'd be safe. No, that wasn't right, he had more reason to be frightened of a powerful, combat-trained Tk than she had to be afraid of him. A public place, where they'd both be safe, where neither of them would make a scene or fall on each other like the pair of starved animals they were. 

"You may have heard of them," Naya said. "Grass, trees, dirt. I hear they're great."

He opened his mouth, then shut it. He hadn't been ready for her to joke and tease, like nothing had gone horribly wrong between them. She took a step toward him and laid both of her palms flat on his chest, then slid them up to his shoulders, and she'd never, not even the first time they'd fallen into bed together, touched him so uncertainly, like she wasn't sure if he was going to push her away. As though that was even possible -- no, he was here to wait her out. After a long minute, her strong arms went around his neck, pulling him down into a tight, crushing hug. 

It wasn't about sex. It was about comfort. Julian didn't know who needed the touch more. His arms went around Naya's waist and he found himself picking her up and burying his face in her neck, nosing against the nearly-faded bite mark, and it wasn't until her legs went around his hips and a truck honked its horn that he remembered they were on a public street. 

He let Naya slide slowly down his body before putting her on her feet. If they were both breathing hard from just a hug, if he could hear her heart beating, if either of them said the words _back to_ and _aerie_ , they would rush back to her place and accomplish nothing. If she accepted the bond in the middle of sex, sex that would be nothing but an explosion of frustration, she would never forgive herself. 

"Lead the way, princess," Julian said, holding out his arm.

*

They walked in silence for a long while. He couldn't keep his hands off of her. He stroked the back of her neck, and played with the fine hairs there, until she was fidgeting under his touch. This was the kind of discomfort he didn't mind her being in. She bore it all very calmly, and she kept her hands to herself, which had to cost her.

"Nadiya? Ma'am?" someone behind them said. 

Julian turned around to see one of Naya's young soldiers, a pretty blonde girl whose name escaped him, holding a dark-skinned Psy girl's hand. "Karina," Naya said. 

Karina's face turned bright red, and her eyes went from Julian to Naya, and then back. "This is Nadiya, my trainer," she said to the girl. "Nadiya, Dr. Julian, this is Emma, and she's, uh, my really good friend. We were just leaving! Weren't we, Em." 

"We just got here," Emma the Psy said calmly. "We were going to go to the point."

"We were definitely leaving," Karina said, and dragged her _really good friend_ in the opposite direction, pulling out her cell phone as they walked.

"The whole pack is going to know we were here together in an hour," Naya said.

"More like ten minutes," Julian said. "Embarrassed to be seen with me?" 

"Absolutely," she said. Naya's eyes fell shut, and when she opened them again, she'd shaken off whatever she'd been feeling. Or at least she gave off the appearance of serenity. He hated when she did that: he knew that emotional control was important for powerful Psy, but deep in the mating dance as he was, it made him want to snarl and shake her, which would only end in her putting him on his ass. "We're here to talk, Julian," she said. 

"All right," he said. "Talk." 

"I didn't expect you to last a week," she said. A breeze picked up and stirred her hair. "I didn't expect you to last a day, but here we are. I don't think I've ever gone a week without talking to you before, even when you were roaming." Julian took her hand and squeezed it, and she looked up at him, no longer serene. There was no mating bond, not yet, but she was a telepath, surely she could feel him trying to reassure her -- how could he have ever thought knowing that she was suffering could make him feel better? "I don't think I'm ready to give in to the bond yet, but...." She shrugged, and the cast-iron arms on a nearby bench began to crumple. "I know I love you. You're my mate. This is right. So why can't I -- "

"Naya, shut it down," Julian said. Her eyes went black, like they had a week ago. They hadn't been in public, then, and he hadn't had the presence of mind to try to rein her in. 

She blinked and said, in a tone of voice eerily devoid of inflection, "I need to get to a body of water. There's a pond in this park." 

"I know." He hadn't seen her like this since they were very small, but their mothers had drilled him and Roman on what to do. It was more of an artificial lake. The sidewalk cracked under Naya's feet every few steps. "Listen to my voice," he said. "I was wrong. You're as much Psy as you are changeling, and if you let the reins slip in your head, people get hurt -- you get hurt. You can't just give in to something like the mating bond; I should have told you right away." 

Naya said nothing. When their feet hit the grass, the dirt turned to mud under them. And yet -- even spiraling out of control, she hadn't harmed him. She couldn't. 

They reached the lake. Naya fell to her knees before it, thrust her hands into the water, and the surface of the water _boiled_. Julian knelt beside her and held her head against his chest, stroking her hair, until she was finished releasing her power and she stopped trembling. 

"That was an unforgiveable lapse in discipline. My shields were compromised," she said, after a long while, her voice still inflectionless -- to anyone who didn't know her, at least. Julian could hear her shaking with emotion. He never would have left her that night, or he would have gone to her sooner, if he'd known the distress would lead to a fracture in her shields, or her conditioning, or whatever kept her from making things explode. "I'll have to go to the SnowDancer den and talk to Marnie about this," she went on. "I'm sorry you had to see it."

"I'm glad I saw it," Julian said, guilt settling on his chest like a lead blanket. "I want to be there for you when this happens."

" _This_ shouldn't have happened to begin with," Naya snapped, pushing herself to her feet. Julian's leopard knew a fight when it saw one, and her dominance was just that tiny bit higher than his -- today -- that it hesitated. 

And then promptly got over it. He stayed on his knees and took one of her slender, strong hands in both of his. "Reject the mating bond," he said, looking up at her. There were bystanders, now, drawn by the boiling lake, but Naya didn't seem to notice them, so he paid them no mind. 

"I can't," Naya said, and stroked his cheek with her free hand. He turned his face into the touch, his cat instantly soothed. "But I don't want this to be us. Me, falling apart, you catching me. I look at all the mated pairs and I see one controlling personality, one -- I don't know. On the psychic plane, my mother's star is _inside_ my father's."

"You don't want to lose yourself," Julian said. "I couldn't subsume your personality, and you could never subsume mine." 

"'Subsume.' Golly," said Naya. She ran her fingers through his hair. "That sure is a big word for a meathead soldier like me, Dr. Ryder."

He turned her hand over and kissed her palm, then pressed another one to her wrist, the one she wore his necklace on. "All those mated pairs that scare you -- one of them needs to be protected, and one of them needs to be the protector. But that's not you and me, Nadiya Shayla Hunter. We make each other better." 

Naya took up his train of thought. "We both picked the difficult path," she said. "And we kicked each other's asses every step of the way. You'd have made a shitty soldier."

"Princess, you just wanted your own private physician."

"I can't say I mind playing doctor with you," Naya said. "And I can still name all the bones in the foot, you know. Can you?"

And just like that, whatever walls Naya had erected between them came crashing down, and the bond flared to life between them. Julian felt her inside him, a pool of still water, or a balanced blade, felt her surprise and cautious joy, and he scrambled to his feet to catch her when she swayed. This was right, he thought. Naya's voice was muffled by his chest when she said, "I wish I could show you the Web of Stars. Every time someone mates, the constellations change. Let me show you." 

She'd never been able to 'path him anything before. She could now. Along the bond, he got an image of this web she'd always talked about: the warm, blazing star in the middle that was the alpha, the ball of rainbows that was her mother, Julian's own parents, tucked up close to each other, and their own stars, blazing just as bright as one another, connected by a strong, straight line of light. "Damn," he said. "We look good."

Naya laughed, and he opened his eyes. "We always look good, and we're going back to my aerie now," she said, taking a fistful of his shirt and dragging him off to where she'd parked her car. 

As it turned out, Julian _could_ still name all the bones in the foot, and a few more besides.

"I hope you realize what this means," Naya said, afterward. 

"You just made me the happiest man in the world?" 

"Sure, there's that," she said. "And now you're going to have to face down my dad."

*

"You've mated my daughter," Lucas said. 

He was nearly sixty, and time had made him regal and, for a man standing before him who'd just slept with his only daughter, the most terrifying thing since Julian's first internship. Sascha, standing behind his chair with his hand on his shoulder, was still as beautiful as she was the first time Julian remembered her, and no one could tell him otherwise. 

"Technically, I mated him," Naya said. 

"I saw it on in our net the moment it happened," Sascha said, before they could all start splitting hairs, and abandoned Lucas to take her daughter in her arms. Sascha made everyone happy just by being near them, but Julian felt Naya's slight reserve; and if Julian could feel it, so could her mother. They weren't going to close the gap between them in one day.

"You're the one who kept the pack off our backs, aren't you, Mom," said Naya. "Dad wouldn't have thought of it." Lucas snorted.

"Your father expected Julian to do what he would have done, which was charge in and -- well. I had to explain to him that you would have eaten him alive," Sascha said, and the pride in her voice was loud and clear. Naya sent a pulse of surprise down the bond. "And then we'd have to explain the mess to Tammy and Nate. It would have been awful. Two dominants in the mating dance need to work it out on their own, and it takes a non-changeling head to remember that, sometimes."

"We're both proud of you, sweetheart," Lucas said gruffly, standing up to embrace Naya. "As for you, young man." 

"I'd say I would protect her, but I that's not what she needs," Julian said hastily, before Lucas could launch into The Speech. "I want to make a home with her. I want to make her happy. I want to lay my kills at her feet. And" -- he looked directly at Naya, because this wasn't about her parents' approval anymore -- "I want to take her last name, sir. Nothing in this world would make me happier or prouder than to be Dr. Julian Hunter." 

"Julian," Naya breathed, and broke away from her father to rush into his arms and, to his absolute horror and unmitigated delight, kiss him right on the mouth. "Julian and Nadiya Hunter." 

"I could take your middle name, too, but I like mine better," he said, "no offense." 

She slapped him on the chest. "Mom, Dad, Dr. Hunter and I need to -- we need to discuss what we're going to wear to our mating ceremony. We need to go." Images flashed through Julian's mind of exactly what they were going to discuss once they were in private, and he decided it would best to let her do the talking. Forever. Sascha gave him a sly smile, and he thought he might die, but Naya was saying, "And of course, we have to tell Aunt Tammy and Uncle Nate, but -- "

"What she means to say is, thank you for your blessing," Julian cut in. 

"As if it mattered," he heard Lucas say, as he shifted into animal form to climb down the branches from their aerie and Naya descended the ladder, and then nothing else much mattered at all.


End file.
